Transitive verbs with non-accusative alternation in ... - Pluto Huji Ac Il

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Rivka Halevy
(18) ba-tmuna ro’im ‘oto maxziq {‘et/be-} yada
in-the-picture see-3 MASC.PL him holding {OM/in-} her-hand
‘In the picture you can see him holding her hand’
(19) ha-’axbarim kirsemu {'et/be-} mexitsat ha-'ets be-mešex šana
the-mice gnawed {OM/in-} the-screen of-wood during year
‘The mice gnawed {Ø/at} the wood screen over the course of a
year’
Finally, it is relevant to note that the dative morpheme is in many languages
a marker of definite and animate O’s, as for example the Spanish a and the
Semitic dative le- which has become in Neo-Aramaic a marker of the
definite accusative, e.g. qatlā le – kills 3 FEM.SG to-him ‘she kills him’. On
this account Hopper and Thompson (1980: 259) suggest that the arguments
known to grammar as ‘Indirect Objects’ (as opposed to ‘obliques’ such as
instrumentals or locatives), whether dative marked or not, should in fact be
transitive O’s rather than what might be called ‘accusative’ O’s, since they
tend to be definite or highly individuated. 11
2.2.2. Involvement and affectedness of the O entity
In the prepositional alternation of the transitive verbs at issue, the O is
marked in terms of affectedness. The affected object represents an
independent entity, whose existence is not stipulated by the action; however
the action has an impact upon it. The be-preposition marks the realization
of the contact between the A and the O. The action is focused intentionally
and intensively on the O. In the accusative construction, on the other hand,
the object is unmarked in terms of affectedness, and is susceptible of
denoting an effected object, viz., a nominal entity constituting the last
element of the verbal process, as shown above in (17) and in (20) below.
(20) hi’ qar’a {Ø/??be-} pisa mi-nismato šel ‘avigdor (Kerrett, p.61)
she tore {Ø/??in-} piece of-his-soul of Avigdor
‘She tore off a piece of Avigdor's soul’
The DO pisa (‘piece’) is inseparable from the concept of the verb. It
functions as an incremental theme (in the sense of Dowty 1991), i.e. it does
not exist independently of the event, and, as advocated by Delbecque
(1999a, 1999b, 2002), it cognitively acts as an internally bounded domain.